A Child Cries Out
by Strop
Summary: A boy became a thief, and the thief became the darkness, and the darkness was sealed away in stone for five thousand years. So the story goes. But little is known about how the thief first became a man, and how the man was tempted, and how in seeking vengeance for what had been taken from him, he lost everything else.


i'm a sucker for antagonist backstories, so

* * *

A child is born into the desert, and cries out. No one thinks to question why.

* * *

Kul Elna is not safe. Akefia remembers the tale of how, as a mere toddler, he was nearly snatched out of his mother's arms by some desperate slaver. She pulled out a knife and stabbed the man in the gut, she tells him when he asks her to recount. Her clothes were bloodstained for days afterwards, but her son remained her own.

Now, he covers his ears and pretends he does not have a mother, that he has never had a mother - because, he thinks, if he has no mother, then the woman lying slumped against the wall beyond the alley is no more than another face in the crowd. A stranger. Not one who requires mourning. The death of a stranger in Kul Elna is never mourned. Only remembered, to be taken as a lesson.

Here is the lesson for this evening: remain silent and hidden, unless you wish to end your life with a blade at your throat and blood pouring down your front. Do not cry. Do not scream.

Screaming is for other people, and they have not stopped for the last hour.

Over the roof of the building across from him he can see the dull orange glow of flames clawing their way through the granaries and across the thatched rooftops of the lower cottages. The air stinks of smoke and blood, but will soon contain the smell of burning flesh as well, Akefia thinks. Before he hid he saw many things: a man with countless arrows buried in his chest, staggering along the dusty street; a second clawing at his raw and heat-blistered face; the Pharaoh's men ushering a woman and her small son back into a flaming building at the point of their spears; robed officials, marching unaffected by the carnage, expressions hidden beneath their hoods. He might have spat at their feet as they passed, had the circumstances been different.

Three soldiers race past the opening of the alley, and he swallows thickly. It feels as though his chest has been wrapped in layer upon layer of steel bands, tightening around him until his lungs burst and his ribs crack. It is possible that one of them already has. The ache is dull and barely noticeable. He pays it no mind. There are other things that require his attentions.

"Is that all?" a man shouts from the street. His cry is still barely loud enough to be heard above the roar of the flames.

"Most," says a second. "They've fled to the lower parts of the city."

"The barricade will halt them in their tracks."

Laughter, flat and humorless. Had he not known better, he would think that it came from the mouth of some dead thing, and not another human being. Footsteps fade off into the distance, but he does not allow himself to relax. He has seen a girl his own age, perhaps slightly older, yanked screaming from the barrel into which she haphazardly flung herself and into the path of an encroaching battalion. Spears pierced her side and the dust around her turned a red so dark it was almost black.

There are no barrels here, but the stack of carved bricks behind which he cowers cannot hide him forever. Even stone must fall.

As if to prove a point, the foundations of a house across the street shudder violently, and he hears it collapse with a thundering crash. Dust pours into the alley. He shoves his face into the crook of his elbow and tries to ignore the burning of his eyes and the itch growing in the back of his throat. _Do not cry_, he repeats in his mind. _Do not scream._ Somewhere across his tongue sits the taste of blood, and he finds he has bitten open the inside of his cheek, the wound going unnoticed in the panic.

When the voices come again, they are close enough for him to imagine the acrid stink of the soldiers' breath against his face. "We have orders to withdraw. Cut down any stragglers you find along the way." His heart all but leaps out of his chest.

Footsteps shuffle into the alley.

His heart is in his throat.

The crunch of pebbles underfoot.

The earth burns against his palms. He leaps. He runs.

If the soldier pursuing him carries a spear, he does not know or care. Better to be struck down attempting to preserve his life than be rooted out like a desert rat lurking in its hole. But five seconds pass, then ten, and though the presence behind him remains, he feels no cold steel piercing the space between his shoulderblades, or biting into the small of his back.

As he rounds a corner, his foot catches on a loose stone and he nearly trips. His hands grasp at the wall and he shoves himself forwards. Pain builds in his right foot, but he ignores it. The words of the mother he Does Not Have come worming through the careful mental barrier he has constructed: _Pain is a way forwards. You can only grow from it. _Adrenaline tingles in the tips of his fingers, along the curve of his spine. His foot pulses; his cracked rib shudders beneath his skin. Akefia grits his teeth and plunges on.

He runs the route automatically. It is nearly identical to the one he and his friends followed during their make-believe games of war and not-so-make-believe bouts of thievery: around a second corner, down two flights of stairs, up a third to the left and past the smoldering remains of the butcher's shop. He catches himself halfway through the route as he realizes he is heading downwards — towards the barricade — and shifts directions accordingly, racing towards the upper levels of the village. If he is not careful, he will end up trapped against the cliff that walls off its northern end, but one soldier is still less of a threat than a thousand, even if Akefia is only a boy and the man he will fight carries a sword or a spear and years of combat training.

A glance over his shoulder shows the soldier still in pursuit, sword dangling limply from his hand. He runs the way Akefia has seen sick dogs run, with mouth gaping and eyes blank. There is something wholly _wrong _about it, and the boy shudders. But then, he thinks, a man would _have_ to be sick to do what has been done to Kul Elna. To call it a slaughter would be an understatement. Slaughter is what butchers do to their pigs when it comes time to sell their meat, what priests do with their sacrifices placed upon the altar. Slaughter has a _purpose_. The destruction of Kul Elna does not.

Around a corner. Down an unfamiliar street littered with corpses whose faces he does not see. Pain. Panic. The soldier running sick behind him.

Smoke boils out into a sky streaked with red.

The cliff face stretches up before him, sheer and monolithic. He halts. Turns.

The soldier's face is blank. Akefia stoops and takes up a stone in each of his hands, feeling their weight even as he himself feels weightless. Raises back an arm. Throws.

The first stone slips by the soldier's torso, but the second strikes him squarely in the forhead. He staggers forwards, blood pouring from the gash in his skin, sword swinging wildly. Akefia stumbles back, but feels the blade bite into his cheek. Tastes blood. His fingers find another stone, and this time when it strikes the soldier moves in only one direction — down. The sound his body makes against the ground is barely palpable, but to Akefia it is as loud as desert thunder over the mountains.

He cannot tell if he is still breathing.

He allows himself to fall.

* * *

When he wakes, the sky is the hazy blue of morning, and his first breath tastes of ash. He rolls over and sees the dead soldier staring at him, eyes open wider than they ever were in life.

He rolls over again, and throws up. It comes out mostly bile, and is the sweetest thing he has ever tasted.

The last retches fade away and he stands slowly on shaking legs. The pain in his left foot is a dull ache. Glancing downwards he sees that the nail of his large toe has been torn nearly clean off. The skin around it is rusty with dried blood. Fingers cautiously probe his side, and his cracked rib cries out in protest. Those that reach up to touch his cheek come away red.

He does not kick the soldier as he passes, though something in the back of his mind begs him to. The corpses of the enemy are worth less than dirt. At least in dirt things can be grown. Nothing grows out of blood and hacked sinew.

The streets are quiet where he walks. Only the occasional cry of a carrion bird breaks through the silence, and even then he barely hears it. His brain carefully reaches out towards the thousand bodies lying still in the dust and tucks the image away into a small and hidden place; stands them upright and brushes off their clothes and walks them back into their houses, where they are only just beginning to rise for the day's work. Akefia's vision is tunneled. He sees the ground before him and the sky hovering slightly above it. He places one foot in front of the other. Turns a corner. Descends one flight of stairs, then the next — retracing his route from the previous night, though he is not fully aware of it.

A building. The mother he Does Not Have lies against the wall, throat slit and clothes dark. There is a knife in her hand, but its blade is untarnished. Akefia kneels and pries the handle out from between her fingers. Raises the knife towards his chest. Feels the point against his breastbone.

Pushes.

Drops it.

Screams.

The sound is pain and desperation run raw and ragged over a thousand glistening swords, and however long it continues is not long enough. He stoops, picks up the knife again. Raises the blade towards his chest. Feels the point against his breastbone.

Pushes.

Stops.

His hands are shaking.

_Pain is a way forwards. _

"Liar," he says, or thinks he says. He feels his lips move. What comes out of them is beyond his control.

Pushes.

_Pain is a way forwards._

Pushes.

_You can't go forwards if you're dead, Akefia. _

Stops.

The front of his shirt is red.

He feels hollow. Wonders what he would find inside of his chest, if he cut it open. Nothing, maybe.

He drops the knife. Picks it up again. Tucks it into his belt. The mother he Does Not Have lies against the wall, throat slit and clothes dark and eyes shut, as though she is sleeping.

"I don't know you," he tells her.

He turns. The walls of Kul Elna pass by like phantoms, and the desert stretches out endlessly before him. The footprints of the Pharaoh's soldiers are gone from the sand, blown away by the wind during the night. They may as well have never been there at all. In the back of Akefia's mind, Kul Elna becomes an empty shell. Kul Elna has always been an empty shell, full of strangers who he does not have to mourn.

When he walks out into the desert, he does not look back.


End file.
